Jazz Samba piece

Stan Getz, Joe Byrd and Charlie Byrd in the only known photo from the Jazz Samba session
Drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt is
speaking out about his role in the
recording of Stan Getz and Charlie
Byrd’s 1962 classic Jazz Samba. In
the process, he’s raising new questions about
how the ’60s bossa nova craze came into
being. B Y D A V I D A D L E R
Brazil, 1961: A friend, Mutinho, Little Sister (Brôto), Maria De Lourdes, Buddy Deppenschmidt and friend
GIVE THE
DRUMMER
SOME
Mexico City, June 2, 1961: Charlie Byrd Trio (Deppenschmidt, Byrd, Keter Betts,
embassy officials and Ginny Byrd)
“Ahead of the rest of Latin America, Brazil posited itself as another country in the Americas with a strong enough history and cultural development to become a cultural peer of the United States,”
writes Ed Morales in The Latin Beat (Da Capo 2003).
The role of jazz in fostering amity and exchange between the two
nations cannot be overstated. Antonio Carlos Jobim had been influenced by West Coast “cool” well before his first in-the-flesh collaborations with American jazz musicians. He and guitarist and vocalist
João Gilberto pioneered a new, urban, sophisticated music called
bossa nova, derived from the faster, more symmetrical samba
rhythm. The new idiom’s seductive sound, unusual song forms and
suitability for jazz improvisation had a profound impact on most
American jazzers who heard it. In time it would become, in Morales’
phrase, “the first truly panhemispheric music of the Americas.”
Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba, released by Verve in
April of 1962, was not the first Brazilian-inspired jazz effort by
Americans. Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Mann, Curtis Fuller, Bud Shank
and Stan Kenton (with Laurindo Almeida) had recorded Brazilian
music before, but without much notice or commercial success. [See
the “Dis Here Finado?” sidebar.]
Jazz Samba, on the other hand, sold half a million copies in 18
months and became the only jazz album ever to hit No. 1 on the
Billboard pop chart, and it remained on the charts for 70 weeks. The
record netted Stan Getz a Grammy Award in 1963 for Best Solo Jazz
Performance, bolstered Creed Taylor’s reputation as an emerging star
producer and gave Getz and Byrd career hooks to hang their hats on
for years to come.
In our day Jazz Samba has been overshadowed by 1964’s
Getz/Gilberto, the undisputed masterpiece of the genre, with its
monster hit “The Girl From Ipanema.” Jazz Samba, in contrast, featured Getz with American, not Brazilian, musicians. He and
Charlie Byrd, the co-leaders, were joined by Byrd’s working rhythm
section: Keter Betts on bass and Buddy Deppenschmidt on drums.
Joe (Gene) Byrd, the youngest of Charlie’s three younger brothers,
played rhythm guitar or second bass, and Bill Reichenbach played
additional drums and percussion. It is Jazz Samba that gave
American listeners their first taste of “Desafinado” and “One Note
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JAZZTIMES > > JUNE 2004
Brazil, 1961: Mutinho, Buddy Deppenschmidt, Maria De Lourdes
Samba” and set the ’60s bossa nova craze in motion.
The American masses not only warmed to the music, but also
succumbed to a bout of consumer-culture silliness. As Dave Gelly
writes in his Stan Getz biography Nobody Else But Me (Backbeat
2002), “[At] the height of the craze one could buy bossa nova ballpoint pens, bossa nova gymshoes and bossa nova foldaway plastic
raincoats.”
Everyone from Eydie Gorme to Elvis Presley had a go at a bossa
nova hit, and the jazz world saw a wave of now-forgotten bossa nova
statements by Quincy Jones, Charlie Rouse, Milt Jackson, Shorty
Rogers and more. The fad soon ended, as all fads do. But in the coming decades, bossa nova would have a truly significant and lasting
impact on jazz. Jobim is now nearly as integral to the jazz canon as
Rodgers & Hart, rhythm changes and the blues.
IN HIS LINER NOTES TO THE 1997 VERVE REISSUE OF JAZZ SAMBA,
John Litweiler wonders, “Would North American audiences have
even known of bossa nova if not for [Charlie] Byrd?”
From Buddy Deppenschmidt’s standpoint, the question
is exasperating.
Roughly three years ago, the drummer filed suit against Verve
and its parent company, Universal Music Group, for back and future
royalties on Jazz Samba, which continues to sell respectably and has
had its tracks anthologized at least three dozen times. In a lucid fourpage press release he recently sent to a wide cross-section of the jazz
media, Deppenschmidt wrote: “[Jazz Samba] was my conception
and would not have happened without the combined efforts of
Keter [Betts] and me….”
Betts declined to join the lawsuit and would rather let sleeping
dogs lie, but his version of events agrees with Deppenschmidt’s in
many respects.
Bringing legal action some 40 years after the fact, with no written contracts to support one’s case, may seem a quixotic gesture.
Ideas and achievements go uncredited every day, in every field of
human endeavor. (And drummers, in particular, have a hard time
getting credit for anything.) Moreover, it was Getz and Byrd whose
names appeared on the album cover; for them to have received the
lion’s share of recognition is not surprising.
But the success of Jazz Samba caused substantial friction between
the two co-leaders themselves. Annoyed by the fact that he had
received routine compensation for a hit record, Charlie Byrd sued
Verve (then owned by MGM) in September 1964. It took him nearly three years to secure $50,000 plus future royalties on the album.
Byrd also grumbled publicly about Getz’s Grammy, not to mention
his disproportionate monetary rewards. “All Stan had to do was
come in and play,” the guitarist protested in a 1963 interview with
Leonard Feather in Down Beat. Donald L. Maggin, author of Stan
Getz: A Life in Jazz (Morrow 1996), writes that Getz “prevailed upon
Verve executives to add a clause to [his] contract indemnifying him
against possible suits by Charlie.”
Deppenschmidt’s case, as Yogi Berra might say, is déjà vu all over
again. And yet the drummer’s tale is a detailed and persuasive one,
throwing the conventional wisdom surrounding Jazz Samba into
question. Deppenschmidt received $150 for his playing on Jazz
Samba, and has never been given credit for his role in making the
project a reality. Maggin’s book makes reference to the “two drummers” on the record but doesn’t name Deppenschmidt. Gelly’s book
does, but only in passing.
Everyone agrees about one thing: The seed
for Jazz Samba was planted during the
Charlie Byrd Trio’s 1961 State Department
tour of Brazil and 17 other countries in South
and Central America.
Keter Betts and Buddy Deppenschmidt
were Byrd’s bandmates on that tour, and they
weren’t merely along for the ride. During a
weeklong stay in Salvador, in Brazil’s Bahia
region, the three found themselves at the home
of an eminent judge, Carlos Coqueijo Costa,
who had been impressed by the band in concert. “After dinner,” Betts recalls, “they passed
the guitar around, and the mother played, and
the judge played and the daughter played.”
The family also spun records by Jobim and
Gilberto for their enthralled American guests.
Costa’s son, a drummer and pianist, proceeded to
give a master class in rhythm. “There weren’t any
drums set up in the house,” Deppenschmidt says,
“but he took a pair of brushes and put on the LPs,
and he started playing on a record jacket that he
was holding between his knees. And I’m telling
you, this kid could really play the brushes. He had
beautiful technique and finesse. He was playing
bossa nova, without the stick and the one brush,
which is the way they usually play it.”
It was just a charming, cross-cultural dinner
party, but it catalyzed events that would alter the
course of American jazz.
The next day, Betts and Deppenschmidt
headed to town and bought the records they had
heard, including Gilberto’s first two albums on
the Odeon label. (One of the records was missing
a jacket, so the store owner placed it in a sleeve for Frank Sinatra’s
Only the Lonely.) Betts and Deppenschmidt recall borrowing a
record player and on several occasions meeting in the drummer’s
hotel room to learn the new music.
During the band’s stay in nearby Porto Alegre, a young woman
approached Deppenschmidt after a concert. “She invited me over to
her house the next day for dinner,” he says. “I didn’t know if it was
a come-on or what. She said she was a friend of Gilberto’s, and she
wanted to play me his music. I said, ‘Well, I just bought his records.’
And she said, ‘We’ll teach you how to play the rhythm.’ So I went
over, and it was very legitimate. Her father had taken off from work
that day, her grandfather was there, her boyfriend and her sisters and
brothers and all of her friends—she invited them all over. Her brother was a guitar player named Mutinho. They taught me the rhythms.
They taught me all kinds of stuff that day.”
The woman’s name was Maria De Lourdes Regina Pederneiras;
she wrote Deppenschmidt six letters after he returned home. Judge
Costa, now an official with the Organization of American States,
also sent him letters and recordings. Brazil and its people had left a
December 28, 1961
eijo Costa to Deppenschmidt,
A letter from Judge Carlos Coqu
JAZZTIMES.COM
69
deep impression on the 24-year-old drummer.
Many accounts portray Charlie Byrd as gung-ho to record bossa
nova after the tour. “When Byrd returned to the States in 1961
armed with ‘Desafinado’ and a cache of new Brazilian songs,” wrote
David Simons in a 1999 article for Acoustic Guitar magazine, “the
first person he rang up was jazz producer Creed Taylor.”
That would have been an odd thing for him to do.
Taylor was then managing director of A&R at Verve; Byrd was
recording for Orrin Keepnews at Riverside. Simons’ questionable
account, which altogether omits Deppenschmidt’s name from the
Jazz Samba personnel, is excerpted on Taylor’s CTI Records Web site.
According to Deppenschmidt, Byrd was in fact reluctant to
record bossa nova. For a time it became the drummer’s pet project
to change Byrd’s mind. It took him and Betts about six months to
win the guitarist over. Betts corroborates this, adding that he lent
Orrin Keepnews his bossa nova LPs in an attempt to pique the producer’s interest. “[Keepnews] didn’t think much of it,” Betts says.
Elena Byrd, the wife of Joe Byrd and the attorney for Charlie
Byrd’s estate, maintains that it was Ginny, Charlie’s late wife, who
convinced her husband to do a Brazilian record. But Deppenschmidt
insists it was he who asked Ginny to aid his cause, and that she too
was initially unmoved. When Byrd finally did decide to approach
Riverside with the bossa nova idea, the label said no. Byrd prevailed
upon Stan Getz, then a Verve artist, to take the idea to Creed Taylor,
who said yes. (See “The Phantom Sessions” sidebar.)
Another point of contention is exactly how Stan Getz entered the
picture. Charlie Byrd did not know Getz well, although Betts had
become friends with the tenor giant during his tenure with Dinah
Washington. Remarkably, Deppenschmidt insists that Getz’s
involvement was also his idea. (He says he recommended Paul
Desmond as an alternate choice.) Joe Byrd, for his part, says it was
Ginny who suggested that Getz get the call.
Here is where Betts’ and Deppenschmidt’s memories part ways.
According to Deppenschmidt, Getz had never played with Byrd’s
group until the day of the Jazz Samba session. Betts, on the other
hand, remembers Getz sitting in with the band at the Showboat
Lounge in D.C., where Byrd and the trio had begun workshopping
the bossa nova material. Deppenschmidt is sure that Getz’s visit
never happened; Betts counters with equal vehemence that it did.
Getz was an idol of Deppenschmidt’s, and if he did sit in at the
Showboat, the young drummer would not likely have forgotten. It
Dis Here Finado?
In performance, Stan Getz used to introduce
Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Desafinado” (which he
liked to call “Dis Here Finado”) as the song that
would put all five of his children through college. The 45-rpm version edited from Jazz
Samba earned Getz a 1963 Grammy for Best
Solo Jazz Performance. But according to Donald
Maggin, Getz’s biographer, Dizzy Gillespie
recorded the song at Monterey in September
1961, six months before Jazz Samba. “Lalo
Schifrin, Dizzy’s pianist at the time, told me that
Dizzy had talked to Artie Shaw, and that Shaw
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JAZZTIMES > > JUNE 2004
is possible Betts is recalling something that occurred after
Deppenschmidt’s departure from the band, several months after the
recording of Jazz Samba. But Betts seems certain that the Getz dropin took place before the recording session.
BOSSA NOVA WASN’T EXACTLY A BOLT FROM THE BLUE. LATIN
music idioms like mambo and rhumba had already gained a
foothold in the U.S., and Dizzy Gillespie’s Afro-Cuban innovations
with Chano Pozo had altered jazz’s rhythmic DNA. Carmen
Miranda, with her garish fruit-basket crowns, had given mainstream
American audiences a taste (some would say a tasteless one) of Brazil.
And Latin influences were already apparent in Charlie Byrd’s music,
well before he and his band boarded the plane in 1961. Rhumbabased tunes like “Taboo” from The Guitar Artistry of Charlie Byrd or
“You Stepped Out of a Dream” from At the Village Vanguard make
this clear. (Deppenschmidt played on both of these Riverside discs,
as well as 1962’s Blues Sonata.)
As John Litweiler observes, bossa nova arose at “a time of transition in American popular music”—transition, that is, between the
fading world of the Gershwins and the ascendancy of rock. Jazz
record sales and club attendances were declining, and Getz’s career
was in a malaise. Bossa nova was a lifeline, but more than that it
inspired some of the tenorist’s most expressive, melodically ingenious work on record. On Jazz Samba it was “Desafinado,” trimmed
from 5:49 into a two-minute single, that won Getz his Grammy.
(Verve tacked the single onto the end of its 1997 reissue.)
Deppenschmidt is still surprised that the longer take leading off the
album was actually used. “After the melody chorus we were supposed
to go into a montuno, vamping on one chord,” he says. “That was
supposed to be the backup for Charlie’s guitar solo.” What we hear
instead is Joe Byrd, on rhythm guitar, continuing with the chord
changes to the body of the tune while the band vamps. Charlie has no
choice but to solo over a train wreck. Then bass and drums vamp
alone for roughly 24 bars, and Getz makes a devastating solo entrance.
The montuno feel is solid; the problem is resolved. On the 45-rpm
version, Getz plays the 68-bar melody once through; Byrd’s thwarted
solo is cut, and the track fades abruptly on the montuno figure.
Next is the more upbeat “Samba Dees Days,” a Byrd original.
The B section borrows directly from “Ring Them Harmonics,” a
swinging highlight from Byrd’s Guitar Artistry LP. “O Pato (The
Duck),” a song with a jazzlike melodic contour, comes from João
had advised him not to release the [Monterey]
stuff but wait 20 years later when his lip didn’t
work anymore,” Maggin says. “But this was the
first [‘Desafinado’] in the States. Dizzy had
toured Brazil in the summer of ’61, and Lalo
took him to what was then the 52nd Street of
Brazil. Dizzy really studied [Brazilian music] on
that trip.”
The Gillespie “Desafinado” in question
appears on A Musical Safari, which Dizzy kept
in the can until 1974. It finally came out on
Booman, a label run by the trumpeter’s
nephew, Boo Frazier. The album has never
been released on CD, although various
bootlegs of the same material do exist. A May
1962 version of “Desafinado” (featuring Lalo
Schifrin), from the album Dizzy on the French
Riviera (Philips), appears on the 1992 Verve
anthology Dizzy’s Diamonds.
And while we’re at it: Herb Ellis, Byrd’s
friend and fellow guitarist, recorded “One Note
Samba” in October 1961 for his Verve LP
Softly… But With That Feeling, featuring Victor
Feldman, Leroy Vinnegar and Ronnie Zito. Flutist
Herbie Mann also cut “One Note Samba” in ’61
on Brazil Blues.
Gilberto’s repertoire. Baden Powell’s “Samba Triste,” the first and
only minor-key piece, features some of Getz’s most ravishing work
on the date—hear his tumbling phrases on the tag at 4:20. “Samba
de Uma Nota Só (One Note Samba)” finds Joe Byrd bowing a pedal
note on double bass. Getz skirts around the main melody but does
not play it; his solo chorus beginning at 1:53 defies belief.
The penultimate track, “E Luxo Só,” is the first of two songs by
Ary Barroso. The drummers’ division of labor is especially clear: Bill
Reichenbach plays legato eighth notes with brushes, simulating a
cabasa; Deppenschmidt taps out the telltale bossa nova rhythm with
rim shots. Finally, “Bahia” (or “Baia”), featuring two basses (Byrd bows
again in the bridge), is the longest and strangest piece on the album,
with a vamp in an ambiguous G7 tonality. The album clocks in at
barely over half an hour, not including the added “Desafinado” single.
The recording date was Tuesday, February 13, 1962. Byrd chose
the small, acoustically promising Pierce Hall at All Souls Unitarian
Church in Washington, D.C. “It looked like a basketball court in
there,” Deppenschmidt recalls. “It didn’t have fixed seating, just
The Phantom Sessions
A number of sources make cryptic reference to recordings that Stan Getz and
Charlie Byrd may have done with a different
rhythm section prior to the actual Jazz
Samba session. In his Getz biography, Donald
L. Maggin writes: “[A] session with New York
musicians had to be aborted because they
could not master the Brazilian rhythms….” In
Nobody Else But Me, Dave Gelly writes: “Getz
and Byrd assembled some musicians and
tried putting down a few tracks, but they
couldn’t make it work.” In his reissue liners,
John Litweiler writes: “They attempted without success to record with a New York
rhythm section….”
Creed Taylor brushes all of this aside: “It’s
absolute nonsense.” There were no lost or
“aborted” sessions, he insists. But the source
for these authors’ assertions appears to be
Charlie Byrd himself. In Leonard Feather’s
1963 Down Beat interview, Byrd says, “We
tried to make the album in New York, as you
know, with a New York rhythm section, but
they just couldn’t make it.”
There is another account of the lost sessions in Deppenschmidt’s press release. The
drummer writes that Verve may have given
Getz the go-ahead for a bossa nova project
on the condition that he record with his own
group. At the time, Getz’s quartet featured
Steve Kuhn on piano, John Neves (now
deceased) on bass and Roy Haynes on
drums. According to Deppenschmidt, Keter
Betts ran into John Neves on the street one
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JAZZTIMES > > JUNE 2004
folding chairs. It almost gave me the feeling of a junior high school
stage, like if you were going to see your kid in a play. There were no
baffles on the walls, no glass window. [Recording the album] was
like playing a concert to no people. Ed Green was the engineer, and
he had done all the recordings I had done with Charlie, with the
exception of Blues Sonata.” Creed Taylor remembers the technical
aspects: “I used a 7 1/2-inch portable Ampex, not even 15 ips. There
were two mikes placed on the stage. The church had pretty nice
acoustics, good natural reverb. We didn’t add much. Not too much
would have been available.”
The session was done in less than three hours, according to
Deppenschmidt (four hours according to Taylor). When it was over,
Taylor and Getz caught the first plane they could back to New York.
“I took the tape with me and told Stan, ‘See you later,’” Taylor says.
“That simple.”
Taylor has voiced ambivalence about the music on Jazz Samba.
The American rhythm section was too stiff for his taste; the bossa
nova feel, in his view, demanded a more behind-the-beat approach.
day, and Neves told him, “We just did a
record date with your boss [meaning Charlie
Byrd] today. It was the second one and we
didn’t get any usable tracks on either date.”
Betts has no recollection of this encounter.
But at the time, Deppenschmidt drew the
following conclusion: “[W]ithout our knowledge, Charlie tried to do the date without
Keter and me.”
Judging from Byrd’s comment in
Down Beat, Deppenschmidt would
appear to be right.
But Creed Taylor asserts there was never
any stipulation that Getz record with his own
band. “The closest the executive staff got to
[Jazz Samba] was when I told them the title,”
he says.
Joe Byrd knows nothing about any lost
Jazz Samba sessions. Steve Kuhn states categorically that he never recorded with Charlie
Byrd and has no knowledge of any lost sessions either. It’s quite likely, however, that the
date would not have featured a pianist.
As it turns out, Roy Haynes is the only
person alive with any recollection of the
phantom sessions: “I do remember going in
the studio at Rudy Van Gelder’s with Stan
and Charlie Byrd; I don’t know if it was finished. But before the term bossa nova was
popular, we were in the studio with Charlie
Byrd. That’s for sure.” Haynes doesn’t recall
whether Creed Taylor was present.
Rudy Van Gelder’s studio diaries list
Taylor as the client on October 24 to 26 of
1961, although Van Gelder argues, vehe-
mently, that this reveals nothing about
what was recorded—or if anything was
recorded. It doesn’t even reveal that Taylor
was actually there, he added. Taylor
remains adamant that he wasn’t.
Michel Ruppli’s Verve discography lists
not two, but three mysterious sessions in
the Verve master books. Stan Getz and
Charlie Byrd are identified as the recording artists, but the sidemen are unknown
(presumably, one of them was Roy
Haynes). Jazz historian Phil Schaap compiled the following summary:
—1961: 3 tunes/no tune names/masters
61vk472, 61vk473, 61vk474 (Ruppli top p.
362)
—10/25/1961: 3 tunes/JAZZ SAMBA NO.
1;..NO.2;...NO.3/masters 61vk491-493 (Ruppli
bottom p. 362)
—10/26/1961: 3 tunes/JAZZ SAMBA NO. 4;...
NO.5;...NO.6/masters 61vk494-496 (Ruppli
top p. 363)
Schaap’s synopsis: “The Verve ‘vk’ master series is rife with mysteries and duplications. It is plausible to believe that the less
precisely dated session—1961—with the
472 to 474 masters is an earlier listing than
either of the October dates, but there is no
data to support that conjecture.
“I searched the PolyGram vaults for
these lost reels at least three times in the
mid-to-late 1980s. I found no trace of them
and can’t believe that they existed in the
Verve [PolyGram/now Universal] holdings. It
seems likely they no longer exist.”
Of Deppenschmidt’s cowbell on “Desafinado,” Taylor says:
“It was overbearing. But the odd thing about it was it cut
through on radio, and it was a hit. You can’t argue with a hit.”
Far from arguing, Taylor laid plans for a follow-up—in
fact, a trilogy featuring Stan Getz with Brazilian musicians.
“What Jazz Samba really did was reach out to Jobim and the
Brazilians,” Taylor says. “Having been a significant pop
album, it proceeded to cause the exodus of Jobim and
friends. They came straight to my office at Verve because
they had no music business connections here.”
But before the Brazilians became involved, Getz recorded
Big Band Bossa Nova, featuring the arrangements of Gary
McFarland and the playing of Jim Hall, Hank Jones, Bob
Brookmeyer and more. (Brookmeyer recorded Trombone Jazz
Samba, also featuring Hall and McFarland, right around the
same time.) Then came the Brazilian trilogy, beginning with
the incredible Jazz Samba Encore!, a collaboration between
Getz and guitarist–composer Luiz Bonfa, featuring Jobim as
well as Bonfa’s blind girlfriend (and future wife) Maria Toledo
on vocals. Jobim and Bonfa had scored the 1959 hit movie
Black Orpheus and were being groomed as Verve artists in
their own right. (Like its predecessor, Jazz Samba Encore! featured two drummers, and at times two basses or two guitars.)
The next two albums—Getz/Gilberto and Stan Getz With
Guest Artist Laurindo Almeida—were recorded in quick succession, but they were held up by Verve for about a year so as
not to detract from Jazz Samba’s sales. When it finally was
released, Getz/Gilberto collected five Grammy Awards
(including Album of the Year as well as Record of the Year for
“The Girl From Ipanema”) and soared to No. 2 on the
Billboard pop chart, held at bay only by the Beatles’ A Hard
Day’s Night. Although it still consistently outsells Jazz Samba,
Getz/Gilberto was never a No. 1 album.
The Getz/Almeida outing did not perform nearly as well.
But Almeida’s Third Stream-ish samba-jazz collaborations
with West Coast altoist Bud Shank, beginning in 1953 with
a pair of 10-inch records issued by Pacific Jazz, had proven
remarkably prescient. (The Shank/Almeida sessions have
been preserved as a part of a three-volume series called
Brazilliance on World Pacific. Only the first two volumes
have made it to CD.)
It has been said, with some justice, that Jazz Samba
Encore! and Getz/Gilberto are superior to Jazz Samba. Dave
Gelly writes of Encore!: “Sometimes the guitars, bass and percussion play so sparsely that the structure is eggshell-thin, but
the time is absolutely firm and unshakeable. [The music]
drives forward with even greater momentum…but with half
the expenditure of energy on the part of the rhythm section.”
That, incidentally, is the sine qua non of jazz, and it perfectly suited Getz’s ability to swing hard at a low volume.
Getz would soon move away from bossa nova. But when
he and his new quartet, featuring a young Gary Burton,
recorded Getz Au Go Go live in the summer of 1964, they
were joined by Astrud Gilberto, the wife (by then, former
wife) of João, who sang the unforgettable English lyric to
“The Girl From Ipanema.” Getz also split a Carnegie Hall
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double bill with João Gilberto in October 1964, resulting in the album Getz/Gilberto #2 (with Keter Betts featured in Gilberto’s band).
Meanwhile, noting the success of Jazz Samba,
Riverside saw the light and had Charlie Byrd record
Latin Impressions, Bossa Nova Pelos Passaros and Once
More! (Milestone reissued the first and third of these on
the 1996 twofer Latin Byrd.)
Byrd continued to mine bossa nova heavily until his
death in 1999. But after using Deppenschmidt on Bossa
Nova Pelos Passaros (1962) and Once More! (1963), he gave
the drummer his walking papers. Not much later, Byrd
hired his brother Joe full-time and let go of Keter Betts,
who went on to work with Ella Fitzgerald for 22 years.
“Sometimes a bad day can bring a good day the next day,”
Betts says, adding that his dismissal by Byrd “was the best
thing that happened to me. My opportunities in life
improved so much, and I was just grateful for that.”
Deppenschmidt, by contrast, faded into obscurity
after working with Byrd. Now 68, he makes his home in
Pennsylvania, where he plays and teaches. He remains a
reverent fan of Byrd and Getz, but his issues stemming
from those days are clearly unresolved.
In his press release Deppenschmidt even reveals that he
turned down a gig offer from Getz about a month after
Jazz Samba was recorded. Back in New York, Getz had
begun to integrate the bossa nova material into his sets and
thought the versatile Deppenschmidt would be a good fit,
so he called the drummer and invited him to come north.
“I was working six nights in D.C. and said, ‘I don’t think
so,’” wrote Deppenschmidt. “I did try to get a [New York
musicians’ union] card but I would have had to live in
[New York] for six months first or pay $500, more than a
week’s paycheck. I was young, didn’t realize how much my
playing was worth and had a young family to support.”
A fork in the road, to say the least. Deppenschmidt is
not outwardly regretful, but it is hard to believe he doesn’t have a few.
Donald L. Maggin, Getz’s biographer, who established
contact with Deppenschmidt upon learning of his claims,
says: “He could be right. It’s very hard to see where the
truth lies on all this. Just about everybody else is dead.”
Charlie Byrd, for what it’s worth, wished
Deppenschmidt luck with the lawsuit shortly before he
passed. And many years ago, in the aforementioned
Leonard Feather interview, Byrd said, “Buddy
Deppenschmidt deserves an awful lot of credit for his
part in the album; he spent so much time working on
getting the exact rhythmic thing down.”
This could be the only statement in print ever to
acknowledge Deppenschmidt’s importance to the project. What the courts have to say is not clear, and
Deppenschmidt is not at liberty to speak about details
relating specifically to the case. But when future historians treat the subject of Jazz Samba, they ought to give
the drummer some. JT